For Meno and Sand, the End of a Reign

The hand-scrawled sign was long on sentiment if short on spelling acumen, one fan’s way of sending Jenni Meno and Todd Sand a Valentine’s Day greeting Friday night.

ROMEO-JULIETTE

KEN-BARBIE

TODD-JENNIE

What do these three famous duos have in common today?

None of them has won four U.S. pairs skating championships in a row.

Meno and Sand had their reign halted at three by perennial runners-up Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungjen--and their own faulty skating.

Second after a spotty short-program performance on Wednesday, Meno and Sand spun their wheels Friday with a long program that failed to make up the necessary ground on Ina and Dungjen. Two errors, one by each skater, proved decisive: Sand doubled an attempted triple toe-loop and Meno singled a double axel.

“We didn’t skate our best,” was Meno’s plain assessment. “We didn’t deserve to win tonight.”

John Nicks, longtime coach for Meno and Sand, put it somewhat more bluntly.

“Up to this competition, they had the best record of any pair in the world,” Nicks said. “To be beaten at the nationals like this is a serious setback.”

By comparison, Ina and Dungjen committed two minor errors, including a slip at center ice by Ina at the conclusion of their program, just as she was launching into her final frozen pose. The two could laugh about it later, since the deduction wasn’t enough to deprive them their first gold medal after placing second to Meno-Sand in 1994, 1995 and 1996.

As the competitors took their assigned seats in the interview room, Nicks quipped that Ina and Dungjen were sitting in the wrong place.

“No, they sit here this year,” replied the winning team’s coach, Peter Burrows, as he pointed to the first-place side of the dais.

Third place went to Stephanie Stiegler and John Zimmerman.

Each of the top three pairs will advance to the world championships next month in Lausanne, Switzerland.